​Representing one of the countless small businesses rocked by the pandemic, MEA recognised Congress Rental Australia's efforts in the simultaneous interpretation space during the national awards in its work as a Specialist Service and Supplier.

As described by MEA award host Nigel Collin, the national award for Specialist Services and Suppliers "recognises the many varied support services essential to each and every event and the successful delivery of that event."
Specialist suppliers make up an essential segment of the MICE industry. From event security to coach operators to photography, these services are designed to enhance the experience at events and, when delivered well, should go mostly unnoticed by participants.
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To learn more about the year that culminated in their momentous achievement, we talked to Jeremy Ducklin, Managing Director of Congress Rental Australia, about the award, the industry, and what innovation looked like for the business.

​Q. 2020 was a particularly challenging year for the events industry. In what ways did it challenge Congress Rental?
"You have to understand that as a business that specialised in simultaneous interpretation, the size of our market was already significantly less than the total size of the events industry."
"Then, when everything changed in March 2020, our core on-site interpretation equipment rental business wasn't viable anymore. We had to 'pivot' our business and become totally virtual."
"The first challenge was learning in new areas like streaming and virtual event platforms so that we could then integrate interpretation into them and offer these solutions to our clients."
"…The next challenge was something that I think everyone in the events industry struggled with, which was convincing organisations that virtual events could be just as impactful as in-person ones. Prior to the pandemic, it was the common sentiment that hosting events virtually was prone to issues and provided inferior engagement."
"There were also the operational challenges that were a result of the pandemic. The work from home orders made it difficult for team members to share information and knowledge and coordinate effectively as we usually do."
 
Q. We saw the rise of virtual and hybrid events as a much-needed response to the challenges of 2020. Where do you see their place in the future?
"Virtual and hybrid events have developed to become a key part of the events business. I think that event planners will now have to include a virtual component in most of the meetings that they undertake."
"This change happened partly because of COVID, but in the future it may be due to reducing carbon footprint and being conscious of climate change. People now have an expectation that they can get some of the key learnings from a meeting without having to travel to a distant location. Although I think most people's preference will always be to meet face to face in the future, there will be an integration between virtual and in-person events."
 
Q. Do you have any particularly memorable events from 2020? Are there any that required considerable innovation on Congress Rental's part?
"There are several. Our first fully virtual remote interpretation job in June was the first time we had put all our training and testing with virtual platforms into a real event. It marked the start of our pivot towards virtual interpretation services."
"There was also the first trial of a physical interpretation hub in our office. For that event we integrated physical equipment at a hub in our Sydney office with a virtual event based out of Korea. The interpreters worked at our hub in a controlled environment with the same level of support they would get as if they were working on-site."
"…Another memorable one was just before Christmas when everybody went on holiday, and I was the only one left. I had to come up to speed very quickly on the remote interpretation platform and how we integrate it with a virtual platform. I worked through the night for a US based client, with sessions that ran 12 hours a day, all on my own."
 
Q. What are your thoughts about Congress Rental winning the National MEA Award for Specialist Services and Supplier?
"Really, with this I think I need to thank the team for providing the innovation and efforts that we could include in the submission. It's so great to be recognised for our contribution, and in this very difficult year I would like to thank MEA's contribution in lobbying government on behalf of the events industry."
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Q. Do you have any advice for other small businesses or individuals looking to apply for a MEA Award?
“Something we learned through our application was that a good documentation process makes it significantly easier to gather up the required evidence. It’s an easy step to miss out, especially with all the chaos and uncertainty, but it’s essential to build a strong case for your application.”
“Most importantly, I think they should definitely give it a go, especially if they've been considering applying for an award in the past. The experience gained from applying in and of itself is something valuable even if you don't win.”

With the emergence of new technologies and trends, myths and misinformation surrounding them tend to quickly spread. This has also been the case for virtual events, which are not entirely new but have exploded in popularity as a necessity. Here are five common myths shared about virtual events.

​Hosting a virtual event is different from hosting a regular live event, but it is certainly not more complicated. Pre-planning, dress rehearsals, logistics, and other components operate in a very similar way to how they would in a live event. They also distinctly lack the need to manage a physical space, crowd, and many of the elements that go along with them. The overall experience becomes more straightforward and efficient from an operations perspective.
 
In addition, virtual event technologies have undergone rapid development, with new platforms releasing monthly. The features of contemporary technologies considerably streamline the process and address any risks a virtual event model may pose.

​Delivering value to an audience is a key goal for any event planner. This goal does not have to change when the mode of attendance is virtual. Value delivered at an event can come in many forms; it may be knowledge, relationships, or even physical gifts, all of which can be facilitated remotely.
 
Organisers can send E-books, reports, and other marketing material digitally to guests. Even physical gifts can be posted to mailing addresses, working in synergy with the virtual event. Delivering value in this way can benefit organisers too by helping to gather customer data, build email lists, and promote audience engagement post-event.

​A virtual event shouldn’t operate as a simple livestream. It should engage with the audience on a personal basis and require participation. Organisers can use breakout rooms to facilitate small communication sessions and networking opportunities among attendees. 
 
A dedicated MC that interacts with the virtual audience is a good option and can form engagement at a personal level. Q&A sessions can be held through chat functions, with viewers submitting their questions and comments live. There are many ways to create an intimate and engaging experience for the audience. An excellent virtual event should never leave them feeling detached.

This is entirely untrue. There are, in fact, many reasons why attendance rates can be a lot higher for virtual events:

1. They remove all physical or geographical barriers to entry, allowing anyone to join globally.
2. The event can be marketed on a far larger scale, vastly expanding the potential audience.
3. There is typically a lower ticket price due to the lack of physical venue, catering, and other components essential to onsite events, significantly diminishing the financial barrier to entry.
4. Technological developments in language services and remote simultaneous interpretation mean that organisers can add any language to their virtual event and thus expand their audience.

Virtual events are certainly more cost-effective than physical events. As the event host, the need to pay for a physical venue and onsite facilities is eliminated. Audiences can also enjoy cost savings in the form of travel and accommodation. From both sides, choosing to host or participate in a virtual event immediately reduces cost. Instead, virtual events take advantage of simple resources readily available for most such as strong internet connections and smart devices.

​With the help of a qualified virtual event production and management partner, organisers can outsource the platform licensing, logistics, and management. Overall, virtual events deliver a professional and engaging experience with a flexible and scalable attendance model at a relatively low cost. With these benefits, in future they may suit many organisations schedules alongside physical events, having a complementary effect.

Virtual events
Events hosted exclusively online allow for attendees to participate in the comfort of their own homes. This creates a more safe, intimate, and personal experience. They provide a myriad of benefits to both attendees and event organisers. These include worldwide access, increased attendance, higher return on investment, better lead retrieval, reduced travel costs, among many others. Virtual events shifting to the forefront have allowed many to experience their perks and it has become clear that they are here to stay.

Hybrid events
Research conducted by EventMB in 2020 revealed that 71% of event planners stated that they would continue to employ a digital strategy to maintain their virtual audience even after live events return. Furthermore, 67% of them stated that hybrid is the future of events. However, this should not be surprising as hybrid events create a unique, shared experience for both on-site and remote participants.
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They give attendees the choice of whether they want to attend physically or virtually. This allows a tailored experience, customised to their preferred mode of attendance and individual schedule. Without giving up the physical component, they also harness the unique benefits that a virtual format would garner. These include increased scalability, bridging geological barriers, reduced travel cost, among others. This mode of attendance has also been gaining traction and is now more mainstream than ever before.

With physical distancing and airline travel still challenging, many organisations have been forced to host their meetings in a hybrid style. Hoping to improve the hybrid meeting experience for on-site and remote participants, Sandra Whitaker, IT coordinator at the NSW Nurses & Midwives Association (NMA), sought out specialist audio visual supplier Congress Rental Australia to provide a hybrid meeting solution that could boost engagement. Congress Rental assisted them by integrating an automatic camera solution with their desktop microphone system.

Before implementing the automatic camera system, the NMA used a static webcam to stream the video to Zoom. They had already implemented desktop microphones for higher audio quality. Still, they wanted a video solution that could both improve the interactivity and image quality for remote participants and integrate with their existing desktop microphone system.
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“Initially, we were using a Sony Handicam plugged into a streaming device. We then added a webcam set up in the corner of the room. Although the Handicam worked well to capture the meetings chair, the webcam was far from ideal to provide remote participants with a view of the other speakers. It didn’t seem very engaging and made it difficult at times for remote delegates to identify the person speaking,” explains Whitaker. “We were looking for an improvement to our overall AV setup when we came across Congress Rental’s automatic camera solution. It immediately stood out to us as something that we needed to try.”
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“Congress Rental supplied us with desktop microphones in the past and the expertise and level of service they demonstrated then made them a natural choice when we were searching for a new vision solution.” Says Whitaker. “They helped us by guiding us through all of the options available and clearly explaining the benefits and drawbacks of each one.”

Virtual events have gained tremendous prominence over the last few years and this trajectory was rapidly propelled by the global pandemic. Now that many have experienced the powerful potential that virtual events offer, this trend is projected to continue into the future. Whether hosting a short half-hour webinar or a large multi-day virtual summit, it is crucial that virtual events are unique, engaging and interactive for your audience.
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Here are 5 key mistakes that can get in the way of a smooth, successful and memorable virtual event experience.

​Your audience attends your virtual event to gain value, be entertained and interact in a two-way cocreated experience. One of the biggest mistakes event organisers make is delivering content to the audience through a dull, one-way live stream. This will almost guarantee lower audience engagement and retention. Instead, employ technology to enable your audience to directly contribute to the event, make the event dynamic and always bring the focus back to the audience.

The modern audience is time-poor and has a shortening attention span due to an increased number of online distractions. When considering audience engagement and retention, it certainly pays to be succinct. Deliver the information your audience needs in a concise manner, respecting the valuable time they have taken out of their day to participate in your virtual event. Produce insightful and valuable experiences while omitting any unnecessary information.

Connection issues, glitches, and other unplanned interruptions can quickly derail a virtual event and make it hard to regain previous momentum. To avoid this occurring, make sure you have a reliable internet connection, prepare redundancies and have a trained technical team on standby to mitigate any potential problems that may arise.

Your audience are likely to have a busy schedule and may require different modes of participation over the course of your event. Making the event’s schedule flexible and tailored to your audience’s needs can increase engagement. You can make the schedule public, break down the larger event into smaller segments, make the segments available for playback if audience cannot attend them live, among many others.

Just because the event is virtual does not mean it should lack in preparation, production or quality. Prepare speeches, simulate audience interaction sessions, test connections and infrastructure, practice responses to unplanned interruptions and ultimately ensure a smooth and well-practiced execution of your event.

Avoiding these 5 key mistakes will give you the best chance at hosting a memorable, smooth, unique and ultimately successful virtual event. To make sure that you avoid these mistakes it is best to hire a professional team with the right knowledge and expertise.

Congress Rental can provide a comprehensive virtual event solution including:

• Expert support and advice
• Platforms and software to match your needs
• 24/7 live event support
• Pre/post event management

Adding any language to your virtual event has never been as streamlined as it is today. Remote simultaneous interpretation is a solution that merges delegates, professional interpreters, presenters, expert technicians, cutting-edge interpretation equipment, and the platform of your choice. The result is an incredibly refined experience that adds any language to your event in real-time.

You may already have plans to use a traditional video conferencing platform such as Zoom to host your virtual event or meeting, and want to integrate languages into it. This is where a professional language integrations team can help you take the difficulty out of adding languages to your chosen platform.

A language integrations team will help you conquer the challenging aspects of language integrations including:​

• Sourcing qualified interpreters
• Screening their qualifications
• Training interpreters for the event
• Ensuring their equipment and internet connection is up to standard
• Offering live support to overcome technical challenges

Hiring an experienced team allows you to focus on hosting stunning multilingual virtual events.

• Our language integration solution works with any of the existing video-conferencing and virtual-event platforms. Simply tell us which platform you would like to use, and we will seamlessly integrate languages into it.
• ​Congress Rental's language production team will help you source, screen, train, and check the hardware of interpreters. We provide fully trained professional interpreters using hardware and software configured, checked, and tested to maintain accuracy and ensure reliability.​​
• We provide live technical support via our in-house professional production team to mitigate any potential challenges.
• ​We offer an unlimited number of languages, allowing you to expand from Zoom's nine default and only five custom options.
• We offer a customisable set of functions to suit your virtual event's needs, including relay interpretation, interpreter partner chat, interpreter handover, among others.
• We provide uncompressed, low-latency audio feeds, ensuring higher quality audio with a shorter period of delay.
• We actively work to prevent connection issues and downtime through extensive testing, ensuring interpreters' hardware and internet connections are prepared for the event, and setting up hardware redundancies.

Using a professional RSI solution, your event can employ a range of languages and expand its audience while maintaining your original message's accuracy and reliability. With over 20 years of excellence in language solutions, Congress Rental can provide you with a premium end-to-end RSI solution tailored to your event. Talk to one of our producers about what languages you would like to add and get started with your event today.

• Give attendees a greater degree of choice and flexibility for attendance, customised to their preferred mode of participation.
• Use technology to create an engaging and interactive experience for online attendees rather than simply streaming the physical event live.
• Increase the degree of reach and scalability of attendance by removing physical or geological barriers to entry.
• Have a degree of defence against unplanned interruptions with the ability to go fully virtual with short notice.
• Having an online broadcast component for an event has shown to be a powerful sponsorship opportunity.
• Get a great return on investment by increasing attendance without needing to provide extra physical capacity.
• Reduce travel costs and environmental impacts.
• Yield valuable attendance data and produce insights related to the event through the participation of an online audience.

With the increased functionality due to the online component there is an inherent risk of technical challenges. To mitigate this risk the production team must source a strong internet connection and supply live support to deploy solutions to potential technical challenges quickly. With a partner equipped to handle the potential challenges, the benefits far outweigh its risks and afford considerable opportunity to provide an enhanced experience to a larger audience.

Finding a hybrid event partner that can cater to your specific needs can be arduous. Congress Rental can determine your specific needs and develop a custom tailored, comprehensive solution for your hybrid event. We make the experience for your remote audience more immersive using our PTZ cameras, conference microphones, monitors, and lighting. If you are in need of a hybrid event solution, reach out to one of our producers.